Norman Sas, The Genius Behind Electric Football, Dies

Setting up the players. Where would they go after the switch is thrown?

Beth A. Keiser
/ AP

Some of us are old enough to remember when electric football first became one of the coolest toys.

Versions had been around since just after World War II. But when the NFL attached its name to the vibrating game in 1967, it quickly became one of those must-haves for many young boys.

Not that most of us could really get the plastic players to do what we wanted.

For those of you in the Madden NFL generation, this will sound really old school. There were no joy sticks. No controllers of any kind. You fiddled with little bits of plastic on their bases that were supposed to send the players in the right directions, set them down on the "field," switched the game on and hoped that they went the right ways.

More often, as this blogger recalls, everybody ended up in a clump in the corner.

But it was football! It was electric! It seemed so modern!

Now, it is with some sadness that we pass along word that the man who created the game has died. Norman Sas was 87, The New York Times reports.